Your opinions please

[caduceus]

Before I started the resto on the Cerb in Dec'07, I had an intermittant fault with the starter. I'd press the button, but it wouldn't start. Then I read on here that if you kept it held, it would eventually start, and it did. Sometimes taking nearly a minute to fire up.

Anyway, I replaced the main earth lead from behind the dash as it was fried. During the 18 month resto, the starter motor sat on my garage floor.

Since putting the car back together,MOT & service, it has been making a 'clacking' sound when spinning the starter, which it didn't do before. Now is it just the starter packing up, or is this clacking sound the teeth mot meeting up or something? Sorry, but I don't know the finer workings of a starter motoe

Anyway, have a listen and see what you think. The 1st start is ok, but the 2nd & 3rd starts are what normally happens:

http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb202/cbra450/?...

Thanks
Cad

[BLUETHUNDER]

Sounds like the teeth on the starter are missing the ring gear.

[jesfirth]

yup - wot he said - the starter gear is not being thrown far enough forward and is just rubbing on the ring gear and not engaging properly- I had this problem on a brand new starter but complained and got it swapped and the new one worked fine.

[malc_grn]

Yeah had the same thing when I put a new starter on, it turned out the mesh between the starter and ring gear was to close, and most of the time they just collided face to face and did not mesh.
Once I realised it was this I made some shims in thin aluminium to lift the starter up a few mm, and this sorted the problem.

[headcase]

It can also be cause by a low switching voltage on the solenoid. If it is this and not a faulty starter then i seem to remember it being caused by underspeced cable in the loom. The easy fix for it was to fit an extra relay (some people call it the 'missing' relay)the wire that connects to the solenoid use this to energise the relay instead of the solenoid and have the relay switch in a freash feed from the batt (via a fuse of course)

[caduceus]

When you say 'ring gear', you mean fly wheel right?

[malc_grn]

Yeah, ring gear / flywheel